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USing the threat of closing accounts as blackmail to gag unhappy customers.

Last week my ip was stolen by a man who is in an enemy alliance (to me) in the online game, Evony. Evony is a wealthy company that has hundreds of servers and many paying to play members. A package on evony costs $30.00 for the typical sized package though they have larger packages exceeding $1,000. I myself am a paying player, I used to buy more packages than I have in the past few months. Evony has always been known for their stingy ways and poor customer service but recently has outdone themselves to me. Before i get started on the details let me say this, I have found no working phone number or means to communicate with anyone in charge at Evony other than one man (Thantium aka Phil) who lets people dip their hands in the cookie jar and does not treat his customers fairly.

This same man who stole my IP is also a player who monopolizes the server, running thousands (yeah i just said THOUSANDS) of accounts to feed his main army and fill the state in to stalk other player. This man is responsible for an attack made on my internet connection, shutting down my net so that a person in his alliance could attack me. This man has been to federal prison for hacking hundreds of military and government webpages while working with a group named "world of hell", a group of hackers who pride themselves in being able to hack even the most secure sites. According to the federal probation and parole board, this man is currently no longer being supervised by the federal government. Now aside from feeling very violated over someone tampering with my internet connection I am outraged at the way evony customer support has been treating me. They have ignored my complaints and closed their eyes to the evidence I have submitted to them. I was in a voice call when it happened and I saved screen shots of the skype conversation. Later that day i got passed a screen shot of a conversation in this mans alliance where he not only admits to doing it but brags about it as well. I reported this in detail to evony and they have refused to do anything even though this player clearly has broken not only their rules and tos but also the law. I should mention that 98% of the people on my server run bots because evony has allowed people such as this man, and a few others like him to utilize every possible cheat, hack and exploit, leaving the rest of us are forced to run bots just to try to stay alive from this massive rule breaking player. Anyway after a few mails back and forth with evony, and submitting ALOT of legit, untampered with Screen Shots, I received this mail today:

"Phil · Dec 12 2012, 01:18 PM

Greetings,

There are a few things going on here. First any data you send us from 3rd party sources can be doctored and we cannot take action on it. 2nd as we already stated to you if you use Bots other players can have your login data.

Which brings us to our 3rd point,are you serious? Your using a bot, your alliance is using bots, your already sharing your accout info with your alliance. How many more rules are you going to break.

In case you are not the brightest tool in the shed, we will tell you one more time, contact your local police department if you feel any laws have been broken. We cannot take action on skype, or on conversations recorded using cheat software for our game.

This account is also now on final warning status, if anyone but you accesses the account your account will be closed, if you break any rules your account will be closed.

CSR Thantium"

I am too afraid to respond as I dont want to see my account closed after the time and money I have put into it. But wow. I find it sickening that this company not only ignores crime going on through their server but enables it by allowing this player to continue his unfair rampage in a game that other pay for and would like to enjoy too.

Comments

ROFL!! I don't even know where to start with this. Evony is runned by scammers , gold sellers , botters. Yet we got people actually buying "packages" on Evony? No wonder the MMO genre is slowly going down the drain.

I agree . I personally havent spent very much on the game but in the course of 3 years there are lots of people who have spent in excess of 10 thousnad dollars (yes i know that seems insane, it does to me as well). However Evony servers have just been hacked and the logins to players have been compromised so i think they may be looking at alot of chargebacks. Karma might be at play.

I also play on the same server as Merrow and know the player that she is referring to in her opening post. First off in that rather lengthy rant I did notice that there were a few, maybe two, accurate statements, the rest were either embelishments, presumptions or willfull lies. The guy she is referring to does not run 1,000's and yes I said 1,000's of alts that estimation is exageratted by roughly 400 to 500 the actual number ( a dozen to two dozen ). Secondly as an admitted botter herself I see a bit of hypocricy in looking down on other people who bot more, I find it extremely hard to believe that she was "forced into breaking the rules" because others were doing it too. That is an excuse and a very poor one. What Merrow was dead on accurate about is her explanation of Evony "customer service" or rather the gap where a customer service department belongs. This gap is instead filled with a few yes-men who are manipulated by alliances who pick and choose who they want to get banned. When they've made their decision ( always the fighter that is destroying them with the most efficiency, so in the ultimate act of cowardice they resort to this ) the alliance then spams the c.s. department wth tickets about the player violating the rules. This is when one of their tools jumps on board and bans the player they mentioned while of course entirely ignoring the fact that the tickets came from people like Merrow who "bot because the big guys bot too much". There is and never has been any sort of active opposition to violating their TOS. So a player may run his or her account no different than any other on the server untill the day Evony decides to permanently ban it. In their terms of service, they state they can ban your account for " any reason, or no reason at all". And trust me they excersize their sovereign power at will. Second truth told by Merrow is her description of the way the c.s. department simply threatens the person who fills out a lengthy ticket, in most cases to open a dispute they immediiately "freeze" your account , which just means that you or anybody cant log into it but anybody can attack it. Its another way of simply giving your account to the server. This is sometimes done when they notice multiple IPs logging your account and done under the reasoning of "for your protection, we placed a temporary freeze". Evony c.s. isnt the best on recognizing irony. Lastly in regards to the man who allegedly, but not proven to have, "hacked Merrows IP" he himself has been banned more times than anyone so if you are picturing someone who has the staff in their pocket, this is not the case. Now in defense of Thiantum, this will be breif, nothing that Merrow stated that she presented as evidence was actual proof. Obviously skype conversations can be manipulated, very easily, and I am rather curious what sort of proof she claimed to have of his hacking her IP and I guess dropping her connection. Yes this is possible, but how do you expect c.s. to act on presumptions and hearsay. So now you have a pretty good view of the state of our server and many if not most others. You have botters ratting out botters for botting, and feeling justified in doing so besides. Then there are the occasional glitches, very few if I dare say nobody in the top alliances cease to make every effort towards attaining these glitches while they last and exploiting them as much as possible. You then have the players or typically alliances who will miss a glitch because it got patched before they got wind of it and they immediately cry out "cheaters" to those who did not miss it. This is I feel an accurate description of the players who are remaining in the game despite its lowly state. There is never the case of a player simply not being experienced enough and resourceful enough to compete with top alliance ( there will always be a #1 ) its always a case of "they are only so big and tough because they have more troops and heroes" I would recommend any other online game over Evony. Solitaire if you must.

Anyone else find it odd that the person accusing her of embellishing is named Phil? I personally had a good laugh. Also Phil if you want people to take you seriously and read what you have to say, use paragraphs and not a wall of text.

I would be angry if not angrier than you are, OP -- BUT, that doesn't detract from the pure and simple fact that maybe you shouldn't be playing this game anymore.

The company is obviously not as prestigious as others, and it seems the community is non existent aside from cheaters, hackers, and bots... so,

1) Why keep playing if that's the community available?

2) Why keep playing when the company has no regard for such issues and threatens your account after you just requested help?

3) Why keep playing when you're showing them that you support them as a company by being logged in to their servers?

I am all for bringing up issues, voicing concerns, complaints, suggestions, etc. I think it's great when people stand up for something they believe in. But, I also have come to realize that it's only a worthwhile fight if it's a worthwhile game. The companies themselves (in most cases) only really care about profit margins and projections, and the number of players(clients) logged in to their servers. This is for monthly and quarterly reports. So they can bring such data to investors and executives/directors to say "on X days between the hours of Y and Z, there are N many players logged in. A .2% increase/decrease from last quarter. So, we are doing something RIGHT/WRONG" <~~ right there is where our tiny voices come in. Not just from forums or emails, but right here.

If you are one of those numbers, you are showing them how good they are doing. If you are not one of those numbers, you are at least showing them that there is 1 more player that won't play their game, and if they want that number to grow, they need to change something.

Good luck anyways. Sounds like you're in a tight spot if you continue to want to be a part of their service.

Originally posted by SpeakzzzAnyone else find it odd that the person accusing her of embellishing is named Phil? I personally had a good laugh. Also Phil if you want people to take you seriously and read what you have to say, use paragraphs and not a wall of text.

Ha! Also, the "threatening" snarky email Phil sent would have had better effect if he differentiated between "your" and "you're" --

Evony is great for wasting money and wasting time. That is all i found it good for atleast.

Edit- And to follow along with the OP, They don't care about you or your money. There is always someone to fill your shoes. Their advertising will sucker someone in who will pay the money until they realize it is pointless.